We'll tackle couplets, stanzas, limericks, sonnets, odes, dirges; free or rhyming verse of any meter. From the epic to the cursory, from the aggressive to the consolatory, we’re all about poetry today.
Donald Hall says that poetry can fill the voids, "that human companion ship is something I value enormously. In my own poems, I wish to be the companion of others who are in the same position as I am." And some young poets share their mission to strengthen New Hampshire’s street cred among the slam poets. We find poetry everywhere, in competition, in the classroom, in the doldrums, even in the police log.
NH's Poetry Out Loud Champion, Daniel Belshaw discusses the recitation contest and his process in selecting and performing the poems; Maxine Kumin shares the connection between New Hampshire and her poetry; and Sharon Olds wins the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
You can watch the finals in D.C. here, or at the very least listen to Belshaw reciting Samuel Taylor Coleridge'sKubla Khan:
Donald Hall explains how he went Without; a Vietnam vet finds solace in poetry, and Sean Hurley goes for a run with Jean Sheperd.
Here's Rodger Martin's full read of Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est:
We’ll check in Slam Free or Die, a collective who’ve been improving New Hampshire’s street cred among Slam Poets, and we find some verse woven in wrought iron and...in the police blotter. (Spoiler alert: Shel Silverstein has the last word)
To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee—
(Emily Dickinson)